Stowe and other ski areas are upping summer activities to attract new visitors
Resorts are making up for a terrible winter
STOWE, Vt. — I’m dangling by my waist some 50 feet above the leaf-carpeted surface below. The wooden plank, suspended by a pair of ropes, taunts me with the ease it must take to lift myself back on and navigate toward the platform only a few feet away. But my misstep toward the final stages of Stowe Mountain Resort’s increasingly-challenging treetop adventure has me heaving both my legs at the nearest established surface, the force jerking my baseball cap from my head, and fluttering to the ground below.
“It’s a piece of cake after you get past this,” a guide below calls out with some encouragement as she retrieves my hat. “Everybody struggles here.”
That’s some level of consolation as the pride of having ripped through the first three courses with some relative ease is instantly diminished with each breath I try to recapture. With one more thrust, my feet land on the platform in between challenges, and I pull my weight forward to grab onto the center pole, writhing my way onto the board.
Gasping for air.
I reach for the water bottle I had tucked into the bottom left pocket of my cargo shorts and take a swig, my t-shirt drenched with sweat. I’m not holding anybody up so I stop for a breather. When I get back to my feet, the bottle takes a tumble, destined for the same spot that welcomed my hat minutes before.
I end up concluding that it’s going to be some time before I try out for “American Ninja Warrior.”
Now in its second year of operation, Stowe’s treetop tour is one of a handful of summer activities at the Vermont ski resort, including a zip tour adventure and indoor rock climbing walls, part of the resort’s new Adventure Center, a sprawling new structure at Spruce Peak that will also house the mountain’s ski school come winter. There are nearly 70 challenges to experience and conquer on the treetop tour, ranging from shorter ziplines, suspended rope ladders, rope swings, suspended bridges, and swinging logs.
“Just like when we were kids, playing in the woods,” my introductory guide says as he shows how to operate the clips on the harness. “Except with all the safety stuff.”
If it seems overzealously safe to clip and unclip at every turn of the course, particularly on the first two stages of the tour, where heights may reach only 10 feet with menial risk of struggle, that mindset certainly shifts during the final, and most challenging course, where ladders become small, round blocks to summit, and when suspended platforms sway in their suspension, unlike the more-fixed obstacles that introduce participants early on.
The higher you go though, the more challenging things get.
The adventure is split into four courses of different levels of ease, each with a separate exit should participants feel they’re not up for the ensuing challenge. The first two — the green and blue courses — are relatively easy, the only increasing challenge being a higher boost on the blue. The red course gets a little more tricky to navigate, but not to the point where you face a difficult decision at the end, where a quick zipline will welcome you back to trail cut above the historic Mansfield Lodge. Then again, the black course is just about a 15-foot climb away.
A few minutes later, I lunged toward one of the five 2×4’s set up in a line in between platforms. My foot missed its target and took me down with it, hovering so close to the respite stop, the longest yard away, so to figure.
It’s a new era for “offseason” activities at Stowe, which just last year opened its zip tour and treetop canopy adventure to enhance the resort’s offerings for when the snow isn’t falling. You can still ride the gondola to the summit of Mount Mansfield, but that is no longer the extent of the summer activities offered at Stowe, which joins ranks with most other ski resorts in New England in expanding its activity portfolio. Canmore Mountain Resort, in North Conway, N.H., has its own aerial adventure. Maine’s Sunday River and New Hampshire’s Wildcat Mountain have ziplines, while New Hampshire’s Attitash and Vermont’s Okemo have mountain coasters, sort of like an alpine slide on rails. At Smuggler’s Notch in Vermont, families can cool off in an outdoor water playground.
That’s, of course, in addition to the hiking, mountain biking, and golf courses at mountains throughout the region.
At Stowe, the new adventure center comes at the perfect time to attract new visitors to the summer landscape, especially after a winter season that one guide called, “the worst in a century,” for the ski business. From experience, Stowe did well with whatever snow they had, in addition to whatever snowmakers were able to deliver over the tepid winter, faring much better in terms of a surface than most other areas in the Northeast. But it was a financial nightmare for most everybody, which certainly puts more emphasis on the success of summer activities.
As I finally descend from the final stage of the course, I retrieve my hat and Nalgene bottle awaiting me prior to one of two longer ziplines that bring climbers back down along the Hayride trail, a rolling hill that is a personal favorite during the winter months. After a day of lapping that trail on skis, my legs are usually jelly.
This time though, it’s my arms that are destined for soreness in the days to come.
The woods at Stowe boast plenty of secret stashes during the winter months.
Now there’s one for summer too.
Behind the scenes of “Jaws”
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